System Of Blood: To Crave Survival

Chapter 1

Lucy's POV

The blood on my anniversary dress should have been the first clue that tonight would end badly.

I discovered the stain in the restaurant bathroom, a small drop on the white silk, right over my heart. Strange, since I had not cut myself or eaten anything messy. The spot looked fresh and wet, like it had just appeared. I dabbed it with a napkin, it smeared but didn't disappear. “Hmm, that’s strange,” I whispered.

"Bad omen," my grandmother would have said, but Grandmother had died ten years ago, and I didn't believe in omens anymore. I believed in facts, research papers, and results. So I covered the stain with my hair and returned to the table where Marcus waited.

"You were gone a while," he said, not looking up from his phone.

"Sorry. Just needed to fix my makeup." I slid back into my chair. Le Ciel’s rooftop dining surrounded us, a soaring expanse of glass and steel with the city spread out far below us, thirty floors down. The place was beautiful and expensive. The kind of place you bring someone when you want to impress them.

Marcus finally looked at me. "You look beautiful tonight."

"Thank you." The compliment felt hollow and scripted. When had his words started sounding like lines from a play he'd rehearsed too many times?

He raised his champagne glass, proposing a toast, "To three years of…."

The elevator chimed.

Marcus's hands froze with his hands still in the air. His face went white, not pale, but stark white, like someone had drained every drop of blood from his body. I turned to see what had terrified him.

It was Maddie, my half-sister. She stepped out of the elevator looking like a goddess of vengeance wrapped in black silk.

Now, my half-sister had always been beautiful, not just beautiful, but she had the kind of effortless, devastating beauty that made grown men walk into glass doors and forget their own names, but tonight she looked like something else entirely. She looked furious and crazy, like those sociopaths you see in crime documentaries. 

She wasn't supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in Milan, shooting for her latest modeling campaign. She was supposed to be three thousand miles away, not walking across Le Ciel's dining room like she was the Joker.

"Maddie?" I half-rose from my chair with confusion. "What are you doing here? I thought you were…."

"Fucking your fiancé?" She reached our table and smiled. "Oh honey, I've been doing that for three years."

The words hit me hard like a bomb. I actually felt my chest compress, like someone had reached inside and squeezed my lungs. "Umm...what’s…going on here?"

Marcus made a sound like a half groan, but Maddie kept talking, with a huge smile on her face, "Did you really think it was a coincidence? Meeting him at that charity gala three years ago? The handsome stranger who bumped into you by the champagne fountain?" She laughed; the sound was sharp enough to shatter crystals. "I sent him there, Lucy. I told him exactly where you'd be and exactly what you'd be wearing. I even picked out that blue dress, remember?"

"You're lying." I shivered.

"Am I?" Maddie pulled out her phone. "Would you like to see the photos from our weekend in Cabo? Or maybe the ultrasounds from my pregnancies?"

"Pregnancies? What pregnancies?"

"Two beautiful children. Josh is two now; he has Marcus's eyes and my stubborn streak. Emma just turned six months old. She's been asking for Daddy." Maddie's smile turned predatory. "Of course, Daddy's been busy playing house with his little pet CEO."

I couldn't breathe. I started to connect the dots; all the long trips Marcus had made—it all started to make sense. The rooftop suddenly felt airless, the beautiful city view felt like it was spinning, and I couldn’t stand up straight anymore. "Marcus?"

He finally found his voice, though it came out as a croak. "Lucille, I can explain…."

"Explain what?" The champagne flute shattered in my grip before I realized I was squeezing it. Blood welled from tiny cuts across my palm, dripping onto the white tablecloth like crimson flowers. "Explain how you've been living a double life? How do you have children with my sister!?"

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way….."

"How was it supposed to happen?" The entire restaurant had gone silent, two hundred pairs of eyes watching the successful CEO have her very public breakdown. "Was I supposed to die quietly? Disappear so you could play happy family with my sister?"

"Actually," she said softly. "That would make things easier."

The words hung in the air like a curse. Around us, the restaurant held its breath; even the city noise seemed muted, as if the world itself was waiting to see what happened next.

I looked at Marcus and saw a stranger wearing the face of someone I'd loved. Three years of my life, gone. Three years of building dreams with a man who'd been planning to leave me from the very beginning.

The blood from my cut palm dripped faster now, pattering against the marble floor like rain. Each drop seemed to echo in the silence, counting down to something inevitable.

"Get out," I whispered.

"Lucy—" Maddie started.

"GET OUT!" I screamed the words, my voice cracking like breaking glass. "Both of you! Get out before I…."

Marcus stood slowly, like he was afraid sudden movements might set me off completely. Maybe he was right to be afraid… "We'll talk tomorrow," he said quietly. "When you've had time to…"

"There is no tomorrow." My voice was steady now, cold as winter wind. "There is no us. There never was, apparently."

Maddie kept giggling like this was a play. “Maddie…hey, that’s enough; let’s go. They left together—and wasn't that the final insult? Even now, even after destroying my world, they walked to the elevator side by side. Marcus's hand found the small of Maddie's back in a gesture so intimate, so practiced, it was clear they'd done it a thousand times before.

The elevator doors closed with a soft chime, and I was alone with the wreckage of my anniversary dinner and the smoking ruins of everything I'd believed about my life.

I picked up Marcus's abandoned champagne glass and drained it in one burning gulp, then walked to the frame bars overlooking the city. The traffic moved in patterns of light, people hurrying home, people walking across the road, and I just stayed there staring at it all. Flashbacks were playing through my mind of all the times I and that fucked-up man had spent together.

I looked down and noticed that the blood stain on my dress had spread. It was bigger now and even brighter, like it was growing stronger with every drop of blood from my cut palm.

"Bad omen," Grandmother's voice whispered in my memory. Blood before midnight means death before dawn.

I pressed my bleeding hand against the cold frame bars and wondered if she'd been right after all.